Hello everyone.

We recently found a bug in the latest version of Templater (3.3.2) that could cause issues when loading remotely hosted footage if Templater is installed on a non-system drive on Windows OS platforms.

We are currently working on a fix that should be implemented in the next release of Templater. In the meantime, this issue can be resolved by moving the Templater installation to the main system drive.

Additionally, the issue can also be fixed by copying the C:\ProgramData\Dataclay folder to a “ProgramData” folder created on the drive that holds After Effects. So, for example, if After Effects was installed on the D:\ drive, we’d want to create a new folder called “ProgramData” in the drive root and then copy the “Dataclay” folder from C:\ProgramData\Dataclay to D:\ProgramData\Dataclay. This should allow Templater to run from a non-system drive and still be able to use remotely hosted assets.

If you encounter this issue and cannot resolve it using one of the previously posted methods, please feel free to contact us at support@dataclay.com.

Thank You,

Jeff

@ermalr

It’s difficult to say without more specific information about the layer in question, but it’s possible that it could be a format issue, a logic problem with Time Sculpting, or some other issue that’s not immediately apparent.

One technique that might help to find more detailed information would be to temporarily uncheck the “Suppress all After Effects notices, warning, and error dialogs” in the Templater Preferences panel. This option is meant to keep Templater running in the event that AE displays a dialog box, which would halt the reversioning process until it’s clicked away. This can sometimes result in a scenario where After Effects error dialogs are hidden during the layout and preview process. Temporarily unchecking this option may allow us to see a more detailed error message when the project is previewed, which could help us get a better idea of what’s going on.

However, it should be noted that as of the most recent release of Templater, all After Effects errors should be logged to the templater.err file, so this is less of an issue than it used to be. Based on the previously posted information, it seems the After Effects error is " An unexpected error occurred while exporting a composition." Unfortunately, this error is so vague that troubleshooting the issue would likely require much more information about the project file, the layer in question, and any dependent layers it might be referring to.

If unchecking that option in the Templater Preferences panel doesn’t change anything, it might be worthwhile to try removing any Time Sculpting and/or Expressions from the layer to see if that changes anything. Either way, with an error this vague, we would need to find out more information about how things are set up in order to make a better suggestion about what’s causing the issue.

Thanks,

Jeff

@1337err

Hmmm. It’s difficult to say without more details on what’s going on. If I had to take a guess, I suspect that there’s some missing or broken asset that’s causing the automation in Templater to get hung up during the versioning process. Templater uses the same render queue as After Effects by default, so if a replicate can be manually rendered, it’s probably a versioning issue.

With cases like this, the more information that you can give us, the better we’ll be able to understand what’s going on behind the scenes. The templater.log and templater.err files are both very useful for seeing errors and reports of what’s happening when Templater runs, so those are great places to start. Additionally, information about what sort of error occurs, if there are any messages, if the client locks up, etc, are all useful.

After Effects is a complex software package, and when you add Templater to the mix, there are a lot of moving pieces, any one of which could be causing a problem. The more information we can get about any particular issue, the better, since it helps us to be able to make better suggestions about where in the process we need to look to solve an issue.

Let us know what you can, and we’ll see what we can do from there.

Thanks,

Jeff

@1337err

Glad to hear that we’re making progress here. The premade title package was probably causing most of the performance issues that we were seeing yesterday. Packages like that tend to share assets between a variety of comps to make them easier to use. So, for example, you’ll change the text field in a “master” file, and that change will be propagated to various comps that all reference the same data.

My guess is that this was causing the performance issues since Templater could end up having to update every comp in the package since they all fed from the same data source. This is just a guess, but based on the performance increase you’ve noted, that’s almost certainly what was happening here.

As far as the spreadsheet question goes, it’s going to depend on just how much extraneous data is present. Templater has to read each data point in a Job before it can begin the versioning process. If we have a few extra data points, that shouldn’t be too much of an issue, but if it’s more like 40 or 50, we’re probably going to want to remove the extra entries just to make sure that Templater doesn’t waste time ingesting that data and when it’s not needed for the reversioning process.

From what we’ve seen so far, I believe the premade project files were almost certainly causing the issue. If removing them cut the replication time by the amount specified, we can probably skip re-coding the audio layers for now.

Finally, you might try looking at the “Remove Unused Footage” and “Reduce Project” options in the File>Dependencies menu. These options can be useful for removing any unnecessary clutter from a project file. However, I recommend backing up the project before using these tools, just in case After Effects removes something vital to the project’s operation.

Hopefully, with yesterday’s adjustments, we’re already heading in the right direction, but if you have any other questions, feel free to get in touch.

Thanks,

Jeff

@1337err

Thanks for the update. I notice that there’s one file whose reference is incorrect in the .log. Unless I’m mistaken, camera_1_photo_3 should be “81Tuw8B7+4L.AC_SL1500.jpg” rather than “81Tuw8B7+4L.AC_SL1500.jpgg”. This might be slowing things down a bit due to the fact that AE will have to try to resolve the missing file. However, I think our main issue here is going to be the sheer size of the project file and the number of comps that Templater is reversioning.

If we take a look at the .log file, we can see that Templater is attempting to make adjustments on 246 layers in 167 compositions. Given that level of complexity combined with the knowledge that we’re doing Time Sculpting calculations on some number of those layers, the time to replicate makes a certain amount of sense. If we look at the gap between the first and second replications (20:54:17 and 21:11:09), we’ll see that it took around 17 minutes to complete the reversioning process. While that might be a bit long, it’s not completely ridiculous for a project of this complexity.

I would highly recommend, if at all possible, attempting to streamline the project a bit to see if it makes any difference. Templater is unable to evaluate what layers are “needed” for any specific Job, so if we have any layers that aren’t necessary, it would be beneficial to remove the plugin from them so that they don’t factor into the overall layout calculation. Additionally, it might be helpful to try hosting the files that are being downloaded from pexels locally. It’s also possible that pexels may be throttling the http access to their servers when Templater makes all those requests, which could also slow things down.

Finally, we might take a look and see if there are any places where we might be able to pre-render items to remove them from having to be evaluated by Templater. We spoke before about audio files. It’s worth pointing out that pre-composing an audio file means that Templater has to run twice, once on the pre-comped file and once on the pre-comp itself. It might be more efficient to pre-render those audio files as “blank” .mp4s so that we only have to run Templater on them one time.

Let’s start there and see if we can squeeze any more performance out of the project. If we still run into trouble, we’ll likely need to get the full .log file as well as some other information that would probably best be shared through our direct support address at support@dataclay.com.

Thanks,

Jeff

@ermalr To add to Jeff’s post, Templater ships with both Render Settings and Output Module templates that can add multiple pre-made presets. There are direction on this page on how to import them into After Effects.

@1337err

I’m afraid that it’s impossible to tell what might be causing this issue without more specific information.

If this is the same project file we discussed in your previous forum post, it’s possible that the Time Sculpting errors that were present there might be causing the replication process to fail. This could be tested by creating a new project with a few basic layers that access the same data and then testing to see if that project has the same issues. If the problem is limited to the previously mentioned project, it likely has something to do with the logic issues that we saw there.

Additionally, we can check the Templater panel, the templater.log file, and the templater.err file to see if any errors are present in those locations. It’s possible that there might be some more specific error messages in one of those locations that could give us a better idea of what’s happening there.

Let’s start there and see if we can get some more information on what’s happening here.

Thanks,

Jeff

@1337err

Hmmmm. Typically, when we’ve seen issues like this occur in the past, it’s generally related to either a logic issue with the Time Sculpting setup or some kind of problem with an After Effects Expression that makes adjustments to the layout before the Time Sculpting process can be completed. Either way, we’ll likely need to start by simplifying the project to see if we can narrow down which layer is causing the issue.

For this project, I’d recommend starting by creating a backup copy that we can use for troubleshooting. Once we’ve got our backup opened up, I’d recommend removing all of the layers in the project except for B Small Message2, [cameratemplate_15.wav Comp 1], and camera_2_photo_5 since those are the layers that seem to be having a problem.

We might need to adjust the properties on [cameratemplate_15.wav Comp 1] and camera_2_photo_5 if they’re being Time Sculpted to other layers. Once that’s done, we can try refreshing to see if B Small Message 2 lines up correctly. If that works, we’ll want to restore our backup and try removing layers a few at a time to see if we can isolate which one is causing the issue. Once we’ve identified our problem layer, we should be able to address whatever is causing the hangup in the Time Sculpting operation.

This process can be a bit tedious, but I’ve found it to be the most efficient way to track down logic issues that cause this sort of problem. Typically, issues of this nature occur when a layer is set to adjust to another layer that can’t finish its Time Sculpting calculations until yet another layer is changed. This results in a scenario where the Time Sculpting can’t complete on its first run and requires two refreshes to complete.

One last suggestion. While Templater should process the Time Sculpting rules in whatever order makes the most logical sense After Effects tends to load layers in the order that they’re presented in the stack from top to bottom. So, it’s never a bad idea to make sure that the layers are ordered logically based on how they should be Time Sculpted. So, for example, if layer A is being adjusted to the position of layer B, layer B should be placed higher in the stack than layer A. This should ensure that A doesn’t get processed before B.

If we still run into issues after performing these troubleshooting steps, we’ll likely need more information about how the project file is set up. If you’d like to get in touch with us directly, please feel free to email us at support@dataclay.com, and we’ll be more than happy to help.

Thanks,

Jeff

@ermalr

The options in the “Render Settings” and “Output Module” sections of Templater should be loaded from After Effects if we click on the “Load Settings & Module Templates” button in the Output Options section.

If we do not see a desired Output Module, we can add a new custom preset by navigating to Edit>Templates>Output Module. If we create a new Output Module with the desired format and output options, it should be loaded the next time we click the “Load Settings & Module Templates” button in the Templater panel.

Let’s start by creating a new custom Output Module that uses the desired format and see if that helps. If not, we’ll likely need to get some more information about how the Output Modules are set up in order to get a better handle on what’s happening here.

Let’s start there, and if further issues occur, let us know here, or feel free to contact us directly at support@dataclay.com.

Thanks,

Jeff

@1337err

Thanks for reaching out. The most common cause of this particular error occurs when Time Sculpting is applied directly to an audio layer in After Effects.

After Effects treats pure audio layers differently than footage layers since, by default, they don’t have any video data. This causes AE to read audio layers differently than video layers, which changes how their time codes interact with other footage in the project file. This frame difference is the most common cause for the “invalid image buffer size” error that you’re seeing.

The easiest way to test if this is what’s happening is to either temporarily remove any audio layers or disable Time Sculpting and see if the error message persists.

If it does turn out that audio layers are causing this issue, there are a few ways to get around this. First, we could try pre-composing the layer and then applying the Time Sculpting to the pre-comp instead of the audio layer. Pre-composing audio footage in After Effects will add video frame data to the layer, preventing this issue.

The other solution is to pre-render any audio files you might want to use into a format with frame data, like an .mp4 or .mov file. Even if the rendered file has blank “video” data, it should still cause After Effects to generate the frame information needed for Time Sculpting.

Hopefully, this is an easy fix, but if this isn’t the cause of the problem, or you encounter anything else we can help with, let us know, and we’ll see where we need to go from there.

Thanks,

Jeff